In this issue:
Mixed Messages for Shari’a Law in Australia
Wealth and Health: A Modern Conundrum
Euro Devaluation, Federation or Separation?
Responding To Difficult Behaviour at School
Mixed Messages for Shari’a Law in Australia
Law is an integral part of culture, and is therefore important for the survival of specific cultures. But just how much recognition should be given to the legal rules of minority cultures in modern, pluralistic societies? Ann Black explores this question and canvases some of the options available.
Wealth and Health: A Modern Conundrum
Economic growth remains the measure of modern societies and economies, despite the tremendous harm it causes. Growth can be particularly pernicious in the domain of health and lifestyle. Garry Egger wonders whether we need another GFC to make us finally realise.
Euro Devaluation, Federation or Separation?
What can be done about the deepening European debt crisis? In this article, Rodney Crisp outlines the possible courses of action open to European governments.
Responding To Difficult Behaviour at School
We have come to appreciate that human behaviour, difficult or otherwise, is the result of numerous psychological, sociological, biological and cultural factors. Nonetheless, there is often a strong desire apparent in public opinion to punish, rather than to understand, behaviour that appears at odds with social order. There is concern that such punitive approaches are on the rise in schools. In this article, Samia Michail pleas for a holistic response to the challenging behaviour of school children.
I am appalled that the notion of whether or not we should accept the law of another culture should even come under scrutiny. I doubt I am alone in feeling that people who choose to live in another culture should not attempt to stamp their cultural norms anywhere outside their own households.
This is Australia, after all; and if you want to come here and live here, then do so…and fit in to our laws. Don’t try to change them or us.
The article by Ann Black raises issues of inheritance. Let those who wish, set up whatever they wish, within the legal means they have at their disposal here. There is no need for a special law to structure whatever it is a person may wish to occur.
Frankly, I believe that the majority of Australians are concerned about the attempt to paint us all with a Muslim brush. Such talk about whether we should, or should not allow foreign laws to be imposed upon us will only lead to increased fear and prejudice.
“It is to be hoped that Nauru and Cuba don’t set the standard for our long-term health.”
I’m afraid I fail to understand this comment, given the health statistics of the Cubans: in particular, better infant mortality rates than the USA and a healthier population with a health expenditure of about 20% of the latter country.
What’s wrong with that?
Australian fear and prejudice are born in individuals who do not or will not put themselves out their as an example to others. If I was to have fear or prejudice the first question I would ask is of self. We as proud australians have the ability to take the lead in our country and make it or create it in anyway possible. As always if their is interaction with others their will be change, but it will be driven by leaders.DO YOU WANT TO BE ONE?
The Rule of Law is pivotal to our society. One law for ALL. Sharia (Islamic law) is a throwup from the seventh and eighth centuries. Is it like the curate’s egg, “in parts it is excellent”? I am personally appalled that ANY parts of Islamic law should be given recognition for ANY civilly recognized purpose in our pluralist democracy with its acceptance of universal human rights (not half rights for women).
Islamic finance – which essentially seeks to “weave a tangled web when others we seek to deceive” over the issue of interest, which it labels as usury – is suggested by some as “acceptable sharia”. Well, in Hamlet Polonius tells his son Laertes “Neither a borrower nor a lender be, for oft a loan loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.” Fine, “frugal” sentiments; but if practised literally (no loans), they’d put the 20th and 21st century out of business. And we don’t follow them.
Sharia’s fixation on interest as usury is a cultural problem for some Muslims but certainly not others. When last I checked, Indonesian banks generally were paying interest on deposits. Indonesians are well aware of what the current interest rate is that’s set by the Bank of Indonesia. This is the largest Muslim country in the world. My robustly held view is that if Muslims don’t want to live in our sinful world of interest, then they don’t have to live here.
In the UK, Muslims have been seeking student loans for their studies which don’t require interest. Good luck to them, but if I were a bank shareholder I’d not be interested in lending to them, and as a taxpayer, I think our HECS scheme is pretty fair. The bottom line is: this is how we do it in our society. It IS still our society, isn’t it? If they don’t like it, don’t live here.
Other aspects of sharia, to do with marriage, inheritance, and especially criminal law (which for them includes also issues of morality which we regard as matters of personal conscience rather than matters for the criminal law), are comprehensively UNACCEPTABLE, incompatible with Western values.
Muslim spokesmen like Iqbal Patel have called for the recognition of polygamy (since backtracked on, but undoubtedly to be raised again in the future). ALL of this stuff is objectionable, and amounts to a rejection of the host culture. I am heartily sick of it.
It is NOT RACISM to point out aspects of another CULTURE which are incompatible with, or positively inimical to, the host country’s culture and civilization.
I thought Australia was a secular nation, not one where religion determines the law. Our Federal Constitution says that parliament shall make no laws establishing a religion, nor shall it force anyone to follow a religion. I note that what people want to pick and choose what laws suit them, too, and demand the government support their choice. What if all groups claiming to be religious were to demand establishment of their laws here? Talk about sharia law is vague and imprecise when it comes to its enforcement. Is the state to enforce it? If not who does? Is, for example, the Family Law Act to provide for financial matters and cutody rights in relation to polygamous marriages? A secular nation has laws that everyone can agree to, because they can be justified according to public reason (based on human rights and the rule of law). We don’t have some different laws for some. People can follow their faiths volutarily, but the state should have no part in enforcing this. I am amazed that you can suggest that we have to get used to accommodating the religious beliefs in our laws. That smacks of theocracy.
Excellent article.
It worries me to hear people taking an “us and them” attitude when we are talking about fellow Australians. There is an assumption that we are “us” and they are “them”.
The reality is that several types of law already exist in Australian society – for example indigenous law and ecclesiastical law.
This article outlines some ways we can approach harmonising different legal systems in a pluralist society.
If the end result is a more harmonious society where hard won human rights are still protected then I support those approaches.
However by all means feel free to criticise specific aspects of Shari’a law which are not compatible with widely recognised human rights.